"Women don't do that"

Our van died this week. The transmission had a funny little hiccup on Sunday -- hardly noticeable -- and then three more hiccups on Monday afternoon. I dropped it at the shop on Monday night after what I thought was a case of the hiccups turned into booming borborygmi that threatened to strand me in the parking lot outside the Boy Scout meeting. I shut it down and said a prayer, after which I was able to exit the parking lot and drive it to the shop. When the maintenance guys tried to test it out the next morning, it stranded them in the middle of the road. Oops!

A transmission rebuild would cost more than the van is worth, so we're in the market for a replacement vehicle. Four years ago we bought an 8-year-old Odyssey, which served us well until the booming borborygmi episode, so we were looking for something similar this time. There was an 8-year-old Odyssey on Craigslist, and my husband made arrangements to meet the seller at 7:30 at a tire shop in an industrial neighborhood. Right afterward, he remembered that this conflicted with a meeting he'd thought about attending at church. "You could just go without me," he suggested.

My instant response: nope. Not happening. He looked puzzled. "Elwood," I said, "I'm not going to an industrial part of town after dark to meet an unknown man from a Craigslist ad." I said, "Women don't do that." 

I don't think I'm a fearful person. I'm not bothered by walking alone in my neighborhood after dark. But there was absolutely zero chance that I was signing up for that combination of risks: heading over after dark to a street full of empty lots and closed businesses, with the purpose of test-driving a vehicle while accompanied by a strange man -- who's been soliciting contacts from minivan purchasers (mostly moms, yes?) via Craigslist. I thought, "What if I were a single mom? What does my friend Jenny do if she needs to test-drive a car? Am I overstating the case when I say 'women don't do that'?"

There's a big spread here, I think-- women who don't like to walk alone at night even in the most pedestrian-friendly neighborhoods, and women who are braver than me as well. There's a big spread among husbands, too-- mine has always been certain that I can take care of myself. (Sometimes too certain, actually.) Long ago I had an acquaintance who told me that her husband wouldn't allow her to pick up a purchase from the house of a man I knew -- even in broad daylight, even with my assurance that with Moses out of the picture this guy was the meekest man on the face of the earth. I'm not sure I can type the phrase "My husband won't let me..." without my fingers seizing up (phew! made it!), so that was surprising for me to hear. (This seemed to be a happy marriage, so please comment gently if you're commenting on that.)

We test-drove the car together and it went fine, but my husband was still surprised afterward when I told him I would have been extremely uncomfortable doing it alone. I don't care how nice the owner seemed; Ted Bundy made a particular point of seeming sweet and vulnerable. And I know there are very few Ted Bundys in the world, and I'm pretty confident in my ability to cause substantial pain and distress to anyone foolish enough to accost me, but I would have to be facing down a hair-on-fire emergency to think it was a reasonable choice to meet a strange man in a dark and lonely place.

You?

Comments

[Celeste]

This would never pass my mental safety algorithm. It's really hard for men to grasp the female experience. I guess you could call it male privilege, the ability not to size up situations for predators. It is what it is. There are things I'll never know about the biological reality or societal construct of being a man. It's the same for men; they can't know what it feels like. I'm glad you have a partner who listens to you, though!

[Maria]

It was interesting to read this post right after the post about Ensign Stella and the nervous angry alien. I am a single mom; I have an independent 13 year old daughter who competently navigates lots of parts of the world on her own. I would never meet a guy from Craigslist after dark in a deserted parking lot to test drive a car. I would absolutely have to arrange a different test-drive scenario or I would not buy that car.

I suppose men don't have this experience. I'm surprised Elwood wouldn't understand that.

[L - Mama(e) in Translation]

I totally totally wouldn't do that either! Sigh...

yeah, talk about male privilege! And I totally wouldn't criticize that couple. Not a problem for me. I mean... some people operate under the assumption that even "giving the appearance" (and this is biblical language that I'm translating straight from Portuguese without bothering to check the equivalence*) of anything amiss is better to avoid. I don't blame people for that.

* says the person with a terminal degree (partly) on translation theory.

[Tracy]

Nope, doesn't pass my safety standards. There's independence and there's common sense. Life is a combination of the two. Thus, I know that I can take care of anything, but I get to choose when and where and be safe while doing so.

When teaching independence, I'm sure you add the common sense rules for safety. Knowing not to walk through a war zone (to use an extreme) isn't being non-independent, it's being smart.

[Andrea]

Honestly, not so safe for your husband, either. Why go somewhere with a stranger in a small space where no one is around?

[Miriel]

I absolutely would not do that. I can't put my finger on the line but for me that clearly crosses it.

[Jamie]

Some relevant details I omitted while blogging (as always) in haste:

* the business in question is owned by a couple we know slightly, parents of a girl for whom I made handknit socks

* the Craigslist pictures made us think the vehicle was probably owned by the girl's aunt, the woman who has the Saturday Adoration hour immediately before ours

* the man didn't offer to meet us after dark *because* it was dark, but because he was willing to do it at our convenience and our one working car was going to be at karate until then

So we knew going in that this guy had some connection, and probably some relation, to a Catholic family we know. It turned out that he was a cousin -- we were right about the car's owner. He was a very nice guy.

I still think to myself: Ted Bundy probably had some really nice aunts and uncles too.

[mary d]

Nope. I agree with your last sentence in your comment, about Ted Bundy's nice aunts and uncles. No way am I getting in a car with a stranger.

That said, my roommate in grad school had no compunction about meeting random dudes (our parents' age) from Oklahoma to sell them football tickets. I went with her to save her from Bundy-esque situations, which maybe wasn't my best idea ever, either.

[Colette]

Nope. Nope nope.

I think it goes back to everything Gavin de Becker writes about in "The Gift of Fear". You can't put your finger on it but that doesn't mean it's not a signal that's telling you something important. The best thing I took away from reading that book is that I don't have to answer the why of why something's bothering me if it involves the safety of me or my child.

[Calee]

Nope! Even if I knew for certain it was a cousin of someone I sort of knew, nope! My husband was nervous about my collecting of a kitten from someone off Craigslist. I made it very clear it was the middle of the day and I would not go inside. It was a lousy part of town but I felt safe enough because of the daylight/open space.

[Pippi]

No way. If I were single I'd arrange to go with a friend and do it during the day. Not worth the risk.

[Wendryn]

Growing up, my somewhat paranoid (but also sometimes right) dad would say "The best way to get out of danger is to not get yourself into it in the first place." I've been running at weird hours (4 AM, generally) for years and never had a problem, but there's a house down the street that started having really weird people around, sometimes yelling, sometimes just hanging around the fence, at 4 AM. It made me really uncomfortable. I live on a dead end street, so I didn't have another way out. I started running on the treadmill and kept doing it until the cops dealt with the house.

All of that is to say, I wouldn't have met some random guy after dark to get into a car with him. The possibilities for things going wrong are too big and the benefits are too small. During the day, maybe, but I'd still prefer someone come along for company.

[Melanie B]

Dom tends to be much more paranoid than I am and much better at imagining worst case scenarios. When I was in grad school it wasn't at all uncommon for me to walk home alone several miles from the train station late at night. I wonder if Dom would have let me do that. He's nervous about my going walking after dark in our neighborhood, which I'd do without a second thought if it weren't for him. But I don't think I'd have gone meeting strange men after dark by myself. Probably not.